Although the BBC planned to make Wogan a three-nights-a-week series after the success of the earlier runs, the original plan was to keep it as a late night series. As Terry recalled in his 2000 autobiography, "Is it me?": "Bill Cotton took me to lunch. His idea was a three-nights-a-week talk-show, starting, say, at about 10 to 10.30 p.m., and repeated as soon as it was finished, just to catch the night-owls. It was a revolutionary idea - at least for British television. [...] [Michael Grade] elbowed Bill Cotton's idea of the late-night chat, and insisted instead that the thrice-weekly Wogan go out at seven o'clock every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening, to catch the early-evening trade and set the tone for the rest of the evening on BBC 1."
Terry recorded a promo spot for the new three-times-a-week format, describing Blankety Blank (1978) as having been a "cultural leviathan" and his own chat show as a "sure and steady decline", before concluding "You can't win 'em all."
With the programme's transition to a thrice-weekly schedule, the chart placing of the series was presented by BARB as one entry, with the average viewing figure of all three episodes used to determine the placing. Although occasionally individual ratings are included in trivia when available, from this point on the ratings information for Wogan is contained in the trivia section for the first show of each week.
For the first week of Wogan's new slot, it was reported as having an average of 10.53 million viewers for episodes 5.1-5.3, charting at 43rd place.
For the first week of Wogan's new slot, it was reported as having an average of 10.53 million viewers for episodes 5.1-5.3, charting at 43rd place.